I’ll admit it: I’m something of an app junkie—especially when the app in question is free. So when I came across a notice about Incredimail while reading through my news feeds recently, I had to give it a try. (Had I remembered that there was a desktop version of Incredimail, I might have thought the app wasn’t for me, but I didn’t remember that, so . . . .)
Since CNet gives a fairly detailed overview of the application, I’ll skip those details here, and instead give my overall impressions. Visually, the application looks fantastic (though I’d skip the stationery when composing a new message). It’s easy to connect to any IMAP account, and the Facebook integration is also nice, though hardly essential.
I quickly decided, though, that the application wasn’t for me, and that the official GMail client better suits the way I work. That’s for two main reasons.
First, the application is slow. It provides push notifications, but I had to wait a bit after launching the app to see those new emails. (Admittedly, GMail’s client also suffers from this problem, but the lag seemed greater with Incredimail.)
The second issue was the more decisive for me. Incredimail doesn’t handle GMails labels in a way that suits the way I work. Yes, it saw my labels, and I was able to access (though again, after a brief lag) any email that had been automatically filtered into a label and archived without hitting my inbox. The problem is that I often need to assign a label to a message after I’ve read it, and so far as I can tell, Incredimail offers no way to do that. That’s an essential feature for me, and without it, Incredimail just can’t fit into my workflow.
Have you given Incredimail a try, or is there another iPad email client that you think works especially well? Share your thoughts in the comments!
[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by wiredwitch]